Authorized (King James) VersionAKJV

Version Information

The King James Version (KJV) is the world's most widely known Bible translation, using early 17th-century English. Its powerful, majestic style has made it a literary classic, with many of its phrases and expressions embedded in the English language.

From Wikipedia: The King James Version (KJV), commonly known as the Authorized Version (AV) or King James Bible (KJB), is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England begun in 1604 and completed in 1611.

In January 1604, King James VI and I convened the Hampton Court Conference where a new English version was conceived in response to the perceived problems of the earlier translations as detected by the Puritans.

James gave the translators instructions intended to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy. The translation was done by 47 scholars, all of whom were members of the Church of England. In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from Greek, the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew and Aramaic text, while the Apocrypha were translated from the Greek and Latin.

By the first half of the 18th century, the Authorized Version had become effectively unchallenged as the English translation used in Anglican and Protestant churches. Over the course of the 18th century, the Authorized Version supplanted the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of Scripture for English-speaking scholars. With the development of stereotype printing at the beginning of the 19th century, this version of the Bible became the most widely printed book in history.

Copyright Information

The Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible (‘the KJV’), the rights in which are vested in the Crown in the United Kingdom, is reproduced here by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press.

The Cambridge KJV text including paragraphing, is reproduced here by permission of Cambridge University Press.